Prague Unveils ‘Gate of No Return’ Holocaust Monument
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
A monument dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust was unveiled in Prague.
Called “The Gate of No Return,” the sculpture unveiled Monday — the 71st anniversary of the mass murder of 4,000 Czech Jews in Auschwitz — is the first part of a planned remembrance site in the Czech Republic’s capital.
Some two dozen survivors attended the ceremony along with Czech officials and the ambassadors of the United States, Israel, Germany and other countries. The Czech minister of culture, Daniel Herman, unveiled the sculpture.
The monument is located at a former railway station in the Bubny district, where tens of thousands of Czech Jews were herded onto trains between 1941 and 1945 and deported to the Terezin concentration camp. Most were later murdered in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.
Toman Brod, 86, was forced to board one of the trains in July 1942 along with his mother and brother. “No one knew where the trains were headed, but we all sensed the transports were fatally dangerous,” he told the Czech daily Pravo.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
